Can I create a secret or private board on Pinterest?

I love Pinterest. Seriously, I do. But there are some boards that I don’t want to have shared with the public at large. I’d rather have them protected with a password or list of people who have permission to see them. And no-one else. Is that possible on Pinterest?

Until recently I would have said that the answer was no and that you were out of luck, destined to host your photos and images on a service with more capabilities like Flickr, but Pinterest just announced the introduction of “secret boards” (pinboards) that lets you specify a list of people who can access the board, while it’s hidden from anyone else’s view, even if they look to see what boards you have.
Cool idea, actually, though I kind of like the password idea you’ve suggested too. Still, having any sort of private shared photo and image site is a really interesting one for collaboration or simply sharing family photos with your close friends and family, rather than the entire world at large, including that creepy stalker-y boy from high school who still won’t quite let go of things.
Okay, no stalkers. Still, I do wonder how Pinterest is going to police things because by allowing people to hide their content, it makes things considerably harder to manage and there are indeed certain types of images that are salacious or even illegal. Dangerous.
Of course, that’s not what you seek, and that’s not what I seek either, so with that comment, let’s just proceed and talk about how to create a private / secret pinboard!
For the immediate future, going to Pinterest reveals a big graphic that invites you to create a new board. That’s easy:

If you aren’t seeing that, choose “Create a Board” from the “Add +” menu instead. Either way, you’ll end up with a window like this:

The key new addition? The “Secret” slider in the middle. Slide it across so that it’s “ON” and all of a sudden the “Who can pin?” question becomes critical. In fact, it really means “who can see this board and interact with it” at this point.
Me? I’ll add my sister by typing in her name then clicking on the match:

That’s it. Now when you upload a photo and click on the menu to choose which board it should be on, the private boards will show up too. Here’s an example: notice that “Family Photos (Private)” shows up and has a lock icon on the right. The boards with the three little silhouettes? Those are shared boards:

So now you know how to do it. Have fun and be safe out there!

Let’s Stay In Touch!

Never miss a single tutorial, review or article here on AskDaveTaylor, sign up for our fun weekly newsletter. It's the only way to get special content that's only shared via email too!
Name:
Email:

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by
buying you a cup of coffee!